on of Government?
Upon that it is worth spending a few words. It is now made known to
the public, that from the very first Sir R. Peel had taken such
measures of precaution as were really open to him. In communicating,
officially with any district whatsoever, in any one of the three
kingdoms, the proper channel through which the directions travel is
the lord-lieutenant of the particular county in which the district
lies. He is the direct representative of the sovereign--he stands at
the head of the county magistrates, and is officially the organ
between the executive and his own rural province. To this officer in
every county, Sir R. Peel addressed a letter of instructions; and the
principle on which these instructions turned was--that for the present
he was to exercise a jealous neutrality; not interfering without
further directions in ordinary cases, that is, where simply Repeal was
advocated, or individuals were abused; but that, on the first
_suggestion_ of local outrages, the first _incitement_ to mischief,
arrests and other precautionary measures were to take place. Not much
more than twenty years are gone by, since magistrates moved on
principles so wholly different, that now, and to the youthful of this
generation, they would seem monstrous. In those days, let any man be
found to swear that he apprehended danger to his property, or violence
to his person, from the assembling of a mob in a place assigned, and
the magistrate would have held it his duty to disperse or prevent that
meeting. But now _on a change tout cela_; and as easily might a
magistrate of this day commit Fanny Elssler as a vagabond. Yet even in
these days we have heard it mooted--

1. On the mere ground of _numerical amount_, and as for that reason
alone an uncontrollable mass, might not such a meeting have been
liable to dispersion? _Answer_--this allegation of monstrous numbers
was uniformly a falsehood; and a falsehood gross and childish. Was it
for the dignity of Government to assume, as grounds of action, fables
so absurd as these? _Not_ to have assumed them, will never be made an
argument of blame against the Executive; and, indeed, it was not
possible to do so, since Government had employed qualified persons to
estimate the numbers, and in some instances to measure the ground. The
only real charge against Government, in connexion with these fables,
is (and we grieve to say it) that of having echoed them, in an
ambiguous way, at one point